[jrowen]

practical experience and skill training, but most importantly a certain degree of influence and power: You can't go on strike if you don't have a job.

People don't have to need these things though. For a lot of people it's all just the means to the end of being able to live comfortably.

Because while everyone could live a happy, fully consumption-oriented life, they'd have zero influence how to live that life:

I don't think most people care much about that. But either way, they have the option to. I don't think humanity will slip into a vegetative dystopia because the default spirit of life is grow, expand, go, go, go, don't stop to think about the bigger picture. There is always curiosity and ambition in the gene pool. But society is jammed up with this model that is low-efficiency for everyone except the people that are financially in a position where they don't have to care (and I include myself at the lower end of that tier).